Homicide Trinity Read Free Page B

was gone. But if you get a case of strangulation soon enough there may be a chance, and I got the scissors from my desk drawer. The tie was so tight that I had to poke hard to get my finger under. When I had the tie off I rolled her over on her back. Nuts, I thought, she’s gone, but I picked pieces of fluff from the rug, put one across her nose and one on her mouth, and held my breath for twenty seconds. She wasn’t breathing. I took her hand and pressed on a fingernail, and it stayed white when I removed the pressure. Her blood wasn’t moving. Still there might be a chance if I got an expert quick enough, say in two minutes, and I went to my desk and dialed the number of Doc Vollmer, who lived down the street only a minute away. He was out. “To hell with it,” I said, louder than necessary since there was no one but me to hear, and sat to take a breath.
    I sat and stared at her a while, maybe a minute, just feeling, not thinking. I was too damn sore to think. I was sore at Wolfe, not at me, the idea being that it had been ten minutes past six when I found her, and if he had come down with me at six o’clock we might have been in time. I swiveled to the house phone and buzzed his room, and when he answered I said, “Okay, come on down. She’s gone,” and hung up.
    He always uses the elevator to and from the plant rooms, but his room is only one flight up. When I heard his door open and close I got up and stood six inches from her head and folded my arms, facing the door to the hall. There was the sound of his steps, and then him. He crossed the threshold, stopped, glared at Bertha Aaron, shifted it to me, and bellowed, “You said she was gone!”
    “Yes, sir. She is. She’s dead.”
    “Nonsense!”
    “No, sir.” I sidestepped. “As you see.”
    He approached, still glaring, and aimed the glare down at her, for not more than three seconds. Then he circled around her and me, went to his oversized made-to-order chair behind his desk, sat, took in air clear down as far as it would go, and let it out again. “I presume,” he said, not bellowing, “that she was alive when you left her to come up to me.”
    “Yes, sir. Sitting in that chair.” I pointed. “She was alone. No one came with her. The door was locked, as always. As you know, Fritz is out shopping. When I found her she was on her side and I turned her over to test for breathing—after I cut the necktie off. I phoned Doc—”
    “What necktie?”
    I pointed again. “The one you left on your desk. It was around her throat. Probably she was knocked out first with that paperweight”—I pointed again—“but it was the necktie that stopped her breathing, as you can see by her face. I cut—”
    “Do you dare to suggest that she was strangled with
my
necktie?”
    “I don’t suggest, I state. It was pulled tight with a slipknot and then passed around her neck again and tied with a granny.” I stepped to where I had dropped it on the rug, picked it up, and put it on his desk. “As you see. I do dare to suggest that if it hadn’t been here handy he would have had to use something else, maybe his handkerchief. Also that if we had come down a little sooner—”
    “Shut up!”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “This is insupportable.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I will not accept it.”
    “No, sir. I could burn the tie and we could tell Cramer that whatever he used he must have waited until he was sure she was dead and then removed it and took it—”
    “Shut up. She told you that nobody knew she came here.”
    “Bah,” I said. “Not a chance and you know it. We’re stuck. I put off calling until you came down only to be polite. If I put it off any longer that will only make it worse because I’ll have to tell them the exact time I found her.” I looked at my wrist. “It’s already been twenty-one minutes. Would you rather make the call yourself?”
    No reply. He was staring down at the necktie, with his jaw set and his mouth so tight he had no lips. I